This invention relates to communication systems that serve a facility which provides the residents of the facility with an array of services, such as hospital or hotel, and, in particular, to the use of an incoming call routing system that is integrated with a wireless communication system to automatically and efficiently implement communication connections between a calling party, who is requesting information about a resident in an assigned room of the facility, and the service provider assigned to that resident.
It is a problem in communication systems, such as hospital communication systems, to efficiently place a call to the appropriate service provider for an individual who is resident in a particular room, if the calling party does not know the identity of the service provider. Existing hospital communication systems are wireline communication systems comprising patient intercom units that are typically mounted in the wall of the hospital room proximate to the location of the patient bed, that is wired through a switching system to a corresponding one of the nurses"" intercom units that are installed in each nurses"" station that is associated with the particular set of hospital rooms. These communication systems also serve a plurality of telephones that are provided in the offices, laboratories and other locations in the facility.
The hospital patient call bell incoming system enables the patient to communicate with the appropriate care giver for that patient. The hospital patient call bell system includes a patient operated switch that initiates the hands-free communication from the patient""s incoming unit to the nurses"" station that serves that patient room. In operation, a care giver at the nurses"" station answers the incoming page and communicates with the patient to determine the nature of the patient request. If the care giver is not the person who can provide the requested information for the requesting patient, the care giver must record the request and locate the care giver who has the requested information for that patient and relay the received request. In addition, when a calling party telephones from outside of the facility to speak with a care giver regarding a particular patient, the calling party must be routed through the hospital communication system operator, who must attempt to identify the appropriate individual who can serve the calling party""s request. The individual receiving the calling party""s request must typically take a number of steps to determine the appropriate response and then establish an outgoing communication connection to the calling party to provide the requested information. As the staffing changes on a per shift basis, the appropriate interconnection of the calling party with the appropriate staff member becomes a difficult task. Therefore, the call completion rate is very low and the information exchange among the nursing staff, physicians, patients, and patient families is inefficient, using the present communication system.
The above described problems are solved and a technical advance achieved in the field by the present incoming call routing system for a communication system that serves a facility, and which functions to automatically direct the incoming call to the specific service provider who is presently assigned to provide services for an identified resident of the facility.
This is accomplished by providing an incoming call routing system, and optionally an integrated wireless communication system, to automatically effect the desired communication connections. The present description uses the hospital communication system as a well known example of such a communication environment in which the present system incoming call routing system is operational. The incoming call routing system of the hospital communication system functions to identify the hospital patient about whom the calling party is requesting information. The calling party is provided with a voice prompt based menu to enable the calling party to select the one particular class of care giver that can provide the calling party with the desired information. The incoming call routing system uses the patient identity data and the calling party""s responses to the menu to identify the particular care giver who is presently assigned the responsibility to provide specific information about this patient. The identity of this care giver is then translated into the telephone number of the wireless communication device or wired telephone used by this identified care giver. An incoming communication connection is then established from the calling party through the wireless communication system to the identified care giver""s wireless communication device.